


The Pressing of Stones to the Stars

by mmmdraco



Category: Hikaru no Go
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-17
Updated: 2012-07-17
Packaged: 2017-11-10 04:17:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/462112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mmmdraco/pseuds/mmmdraco
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All Ochi wants is a little respect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Pressing of Stones to the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, I mean no harm, I have no money... Stuff like that. Yeah.

It was absolutely useless to try to comprehend Shindou Hikaru's actions when it came to go. Whether it was about a particular hand, a single game, or his entire style of play, one question led to another, and answers came no more quickly than those to the most difficult tsumego, when taken at a glance. Ochi therefore tried not to think about the other boy.

It was difficult, though. If Touya Akira was the boy who was supposedly going to lead the wave of the new generation, then Hikaru was the rest of the crest of the wave, as long as you talked to anyone else. Kuwabara, Ogata, Kurata, Touya-meijin... he'd heard them all talk about those two as though no one else played go anymore. And it was always as though Touya Akira was the steady man walking the path, but Shindou Hikaru was the genius who was stepping on his heels and about to overtake him. It was insanity!

Ochi had a nearly flawless record. He'd lost a few games, but not nearly as many as Hikaru had. And no one talked about him. At least, no one who had anything nice to say.

It was hard for him to lose. When he was in first grade, he'd won a contest for being able to color inside the lines better than all of the other first graders in the school. They'd given him a fresh pack of crayons, and a new pad of paper. He'd made sure to flaunt them for the rest of the year so everyone else could see that he was the best one, but no one had cared. One little girl had asked to use his pink crayon, and he'd given it to her. She hadn't even bothered to return it. When he found out that he was good at go, it was much the same thing. 

All of the adults told him he was brilliant. His grandfather hired tutors for him, and played against him himself, and took him down to take the insei test. Yet, the other kids in his class didn't care. They didn't care when he had to miss days for go; weren't even jealous. They didn't care that he was well on his way to a career when they hadn't even started going to cram school to get ready for high school exams. And they certainly didn't care about go.

When he'd become an insei, he thought everything would suddenly change. He'd be around kids who were exactly the same. They'd hang out, or do whatever kids did together, and they'd play go. Only, they weren't like him. To start with, there were a lot of them who were better at go than he was, and when they beat him, they laughed about it. The first time it had happened, he'd held in his emotions and excused himself to the bathroom. He didn't cry until he'd locked the stall door behind him, and visualized how he would beat them the next time by tapping out the game pattern against the wall until the tears had dried enough on his face that he could show himself again.

Finally, it had seemed like no one was going to acknowledge him. So, he'd have to win. And he'd have to keep winning. The pro exam was about to start, and he was going to take it, and take it all. He trained and studied harder and longer than he'd ever thought to do previously, and for what? When it came down to it, he wasn't good enough. Shindou Hikaru, who Touya Akira was training him to beat, still won. And it was just like Touya had expected, wasn't it? He'd gone in swinging, but he couldn't quite reach in far enough to deal the final blow. 

So it continued that everything was about Shindou Hikaru. Whether he showed up to games and won, or showed up and played strangely and lost, or didn't show up at all for months, he was talked about. When he played well, he was "about to surpass Touya" and when he didn't, they gave excuses! For someone else! These were pros, too. These were people whose job was to see past the ideas, and straight into the heart of the game, but they didn't. They saw the hype, and believed it. Even Touya Akira believed that if anyone was going to surpass him from below, it could only be Shindou.

When he'd first heard about the Hokuto Cup, he'd had hope. This was a chance for international prestige, and maybe the chance to finally prove himself. Only, Touya was going to be part of it, so he wouldn't be the headliner, and then Hikaru qualified, so he wouldn't be talked about. So that left playing Kiyoharu Yashiro to prove to at least the two of them that he belonged, only he didn't. That second-rate newbie actually beat him.

He was tempted to give up. But, he couldn't. Despite hating his situation, he still loved something about the game. That was what had kept him playing even though he'd been teased and taunted. He'd change, or so he promised himself. Maybe if he could just play for the game, and not try to play for anyone else, then he'd be okay. But even Ochi himself recognized that change was as hard-won as the Meijin title. He'd have to put as much into it as he did into go. 

Thinking back to some of the things he'd heard said about Shindou, he wondered if that was the secret: change. The boy has supposedly regressed since Kadowaki had played him the first time, and the same thing with Touya, but he'd grown so much since Ochi had seen him as an insei. Was change so simple for him that he could flip back and forth like Othello stones? Ochi wondered at it a moment, then decided that the only way to find out was to try it for himself. He'd find his own way, someday. He was young yet, he knew. But that didn't mean he didn't know what he wanted.

All he wanted was a little respect.


End file.
